1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to print jobs in an image forming apparatus such as a printer or multi-purpose tray, and more particularly, to a method and a system to share an image forming apparatus among a plurality of hosts and enabling wireless communication with the image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless universal serial bus (USB) is a protocol used to transfer data by connecting a host to up to 127 devices. The wireless USB adds the convenience of wireless operation to the performance and security of a wired USB, and uses a star topology in which the host is directly connected to the devices by point-to-point connections. A combination of a wireless USB host and plural wireless USB devices are referred to as a cluster. Unlike a wired USB, a wireless USB has no hub in its connection structure. The wireless USB host initiates and schedules data transfers to the devices in the cluster, allotting time slots and bandwidth to each of the connected devices. Clusters can physically overlap with minimal interference, and therefore can coexist in the same wireless cell. The wireless USB employs an ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless transmission medium. The advantages of using UWB include high speed transmission, low power consumption, resistance to wiretapping, a high level of transmission security, and accurate position sensing.
An important goal of the wireless USB is to ensure easy installation and operation. Toward that end, the wireless USB standard will support the following features. The wireless USB will be fully backward compatible with the one billion wired USB connections already in operation. Moreover, wireless USB will be compatible with current USB drivers and firmware and provide bridging from wired USB devices and hosts. At launch, the wireless USB will provide speeds of up to 480 Mbps, which is comparable to a wired USB 2.0 standard and high enough to provide wireless transfer of rich digital multimedia formats. As UWB technology and process technology evolve, bandwidth may exceed 1 Gbps.
Since a current wireless USB protocol standard uses an existing wired USB protocol, the current wireless USB protocol is easily applied to products, but the full advantages of wireless USB cannot be provided. For example, the wired USB protocol enables one USB host to be connected to a plurality of peripheral devices through a hub to transfer data between the USB host and the peripheral devices. However, though the wireless USB protocol enables the host to be connected to a plurality of nearby devices, it is possible to communicate only between an initially assigned host and devices. That is, in order to connect a device to a plurality of hosts, it is necessary to reset environments by assigning each new host to be connected. When the device is an image forming apparatus, and a plurality of hosts request the image forming apparatus to print, it is necessary to reset network environments by assigning each host.